The Brexit Thread

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Ad hoc, but Romania is marginally less likely to get thrown out of the EU.

[ad hoc]

True

[Antepli Ejderha]

John Major on Channel Four News was rather good, almost came across as statesmanlike. The contempt be holds Johnson, Gove et al in was clear.

[Alderman Barnes]

Not to suggest that anyone on here's doing it, but I've noticed a nasty tendency among Lexity types to reduce British people in Europe to either elite business jet-setters or 'gammon' on the Costa del Sol, rather than ordinary people living abroad in good faith who've now been cut adrift, mostly having had no say in the matter.

It's a sickening feeling when it seems that the only people who even acknowledge your existence are a few relatively sane Tories from the dim and distant past and Labour right-wingers who are most likely only using you as a stick to stir the shit with.

[Snake Plissken]

IIRC, that "Question Time wall of gammon" was from a single episode, the debate where Jeremy Corbyn was attacked for refusing to nuke North Korea.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not to suggest that anyone on here's doing it, but I've noticed a nasty tendency among Lexity types to reduce British people in Europe to either elite business jet-setters or 'gammon' on the Costa del Sol, rather than ordinary people living abroad in good faith who've now been cut adrift, mostly having had no say in the matter.

It's a sickening feeling when it seems that the only people who even acknowledge your existence are a few relatively sane Tories from the dim and distant past and Labour right-wingers who are most likely only using you as a stick to stir the shit with.

Well said.

[johnr]

Well said.

But the 'Lexity types' are such a fringe bunch. I haven't seen anybody in mainstream Labour - by which I mean the shadow cabinet - talking that way. I'm pretty sure that one of Corbyn's speeches addressed it, something about 'we need to remember our folk abroad as well as EU citizens here'. It's not just RW Labour saying it.

[Lang Spoon]

But the likes of McDonnell, and especially wee bams like Findlay seem to keep gleefully ruling
out the Single Market? Too esoteric for me the games being played.

[johnr]

They're ruling out the Single Market, but want something very similar, to be negotiated. As I mentioned a few pages back, I can't think that they'd be doing this unless they've had some sort of heads-up from Barnier et al at their meetings - they'd be very silly if they were.

It is esoteric, and 'playing politics' - but that's what they're there for. Fwiw, I never took Corbyn's 'truthful, honest politics' - or whatever it was he said - as meaning that they wouldn't be as canny as they could be, given the circumstances.

[Ginger Yellow]

They're ruling out the Single Market, but want something very similar, to be negotiated. As I mentioned a few pages back, I can't think that they'd be doing this unless they've had some sort of heads-up from Barnier et al at their meetings - they'd be very silly if they were.

This is also the Tory position, and it doesn't seem like they've got a heads up from Barnier.

[Toby Gymshorts]

TLMG is about to renew her Irish passport, and is somewhat amused by my consternation at having to queue at the airport with a load of small-island dickheads.

I love her really. No, really.

[johnr]

This is also the Tory position, and it doesn't seem like they've got a heads up from Barnier.

The semantics are important. Yes, both want to 'negotiate' SM etc. I have a feeling that Barnier etc know that Labour would be more 'reasonable' and better to deal with.

Though it is just a feeling. Possibly just born out of tribal allegiance.

[Tubby Isaacs]

There was some good work in the speech on immigration, which looks like it's working towards Single Market (and which ought to have been said by Labour politicians for years before). But the state aid thing they chucked in- that seemed like an unnecessary extra barrier.

[E10 Rifle]

The semantics are important. Yes, both want to 'negotiate' SM etc. I have a feeling that Barnier etc know that Labour would be more 'reasonable' and better to deal with.

Though it is just a feeling. Possibly just born out of tribal allegiance.

Yeah I think Corbs' speech was aimed mainly at EU bigwigs (message: 'we're not going to agree on everything, but we'll negotiate reasonably, and we're not gonna be like those mad cunts', with a couple of 'state aid' signifiers chucked in to 'reassure the base'. All of these speeches are invested with more significance than they merit - and most people don't give a toss about them - but it was calibrated reasonably adeptly.

[Flynnie]

I can see how it might be seen as a bit snobby and sneery. You're always heading into iffy territory when your piss-take of people is based on what they look like rather than what they say.

I think it's getting towards the idea that there's a correlation between that kind of person - clearly comfortable, middle aged and older, not affected by austerity in any meaningful way, blazers and golf club attire - and the imperialistic nostalgia for the days of yore that drives Brexit, the Tory party, nuclear weapons fetishizing, etc.

It's very dirtbag left, which has had a surprising amount of success by pointing to whoever and going "Just look at these fucking people. They're grotesque. Why are you listening to them?"

[Etienne]

I think that the last couple of days have clarified that there is no negotiated settlement that the Tories are capable of agreeing with the EU and we're either heading for no deal, or a complete capitulation from May and BINO. I fear that the no deal is the more likely though.

[Nefertiti2]

This is very good on Brexit and the state of Britain more generally

t would be almost reassuring to know that there was an ideology of Tory Brexit that was driving things, just as there is an ideology known as ‘Lexit’ which views the EU as an anti-democratic neoliberal institution that must be resisted. But for the generation who entered public life in the 1990s, after the ‘end of ideology’, there were only two choices: to devote oneself with immense earnestness to the nitty-gritty of policy and economics, or to revel in the freedom of symbolism and storytelling, as journalists, PR professionals and pranksters. Political careers came later. Britain’s misfortune is that matters of the greatest seriousness are now in the hands of basically unserious people.

[E10 Rifle]

Either could collapse the government, one might hope.

[Snake Plissken]

I think it's getting towards the idea that there's a correlation between that kind of person - clearly comfortable, middle aged and older, not affected by austerity in any meaningful way, blazers and golf club attire - and the imperialistic nostalgia for the days of yore that drives Brexit, the Tory party, nuclear weapons fetishizing, etc.

It's very dirtbag left, which has had a surprising amount of success by pointing to whoever and going "Just look at these fucking people. They're grotesque. Why are you listening to them?"

Considering that the gammons like to hate people with different skin colour, age, hairstyles, beards, sexualities, life experiences and education levels and are happily and openly judging them and advocating restrictions on their life, then... fuck 'em.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Absolutely Snake!

[ursus arctos]

That LRB piece is rather good. Thank you, nef

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/968910361079570432

[E10 Rifle]

We don't need some faceless Eurocrat to divide us. We're already divided as fuck, thanks largely to the sort of people the Telegraph cheerleads

[Tubby Isaacs]

Indeed.

This is the slightly more polite though related argument from The Times. Don't explain to your readers, and then make them think it's "baffling".

[Duncan Gardner]

We don't need some faceless Eurocrat to divide us. We're already divided as fuck, thanks largely to the sort of people the Telegraph cheerleads

Indeed- two bickering and probably implacably opposed factions, both at close to 50% public support and with little sign that compromise is possible.

And then there's Northern Ireland